Slaving the Dome (Part 1)

It has been interesting to see if we can automate the Pulsar Dome through ASCOM to slave it to the movement of the Paramount MEII and the 3 OTAs that reside on top.

We originally tried using SGPro and a complicated spreadsheet from Pulsar to record and then model the spherical trigonometry that is needed to make this work. After a number of days we gave up as it simply was not aligning the slit of the dome with the main OTA let alone the other 2 that are piggybacked.

So we are now trying to resolve using TheSkyX Dome Add-On, an expensive piece of software from Bisque that if it works, despite the cost is worth every penny.

TheSkyX Dome Slit visibility

Well after putting in some simple figures as stated in TheySkyX user manual over a few pages, we have managed to slave the dome slit to the main scope with ease. It was really very simple and after the mucking about with SGPro and the model information from Pulsar spreadsheet, it just works. I then took a look at the 2 other OTAs and have changed various figures that I will share once all work flawlessly. These figures are to do with offsets for the OTAs from the optical centre of the main OTA. I have asked Bisque to confirm I am changing the right figures and asked how I save them to a profile or alike so that I do not have to re-enter them every time we want to swap scopes to image from. I have also asked for clarity around moving the dome at sidereal using the distance of the OTA to the dome slit figure.

Dome Add-On setting page for configuring the scope offset

At the moment whilst I await their return on the questions, the mount is able to slew around the sky and the main OTA is always within the centre of the dome. The 2 other OTAs if I change the figures in the fields for the offsets also are in the main through the slit, just near the meridian there is a slight overlap but I have guessed some fo the figures so they may be wrong.

More to update later once I have the clarity from Software Bisque I hope.